Or, rather, three dictionaries. His 1984 workDictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Noveltakes the guise of three conflicting referenceworks devoted to a historical event from thelate 8th century. At that time, the Khazars, aTurkic people at the crossroads of Europeand Asia, decided to give up their traditionalreligion and embrace a new faith. The specificsof their conversion are clouded in the mists oftime, and the Khazars themselves didn't stayaround to tell their own version of the story. They were eventually conquered by Sviatoslav Iof Kiev, and disappeared from the annals ofhistory-although some (notably Arthur Koestler,who developed this thesis in his 1976 book The Thirteenth Tribe)believe that the Ashkenazi Jews are their modern-day descendants.

Pavić takes the historical moment of the Khazars's conversion asthe focal point of his book. He relates that the Khazar ruler firstmade the decision to convert before he had decided which newreligion to embrace. To settle matters, he invited representativesof Islam, Christianity and Judaism to come to his court, where eachwould be given the opportunity to present the reasons why he andhis nation should accept their creed. Pavić tells us that laterscholars attempted to reconstruct the resulting debate betweenthe three religions leaders, known as the "Khazar polemic," andtheir findings were compiled in a now lost 1691 book entitled TheKhazar Dictionary. Pavić's novel is purportedly the result of anattempt to reconstruct that work-which, in its original form, wascomprised of three sections, which drew respectively on Christian, Moslem and Hebrew sources.

Did you get that? In other words, this is a work of fiction thataims to recreate an allegedly non-fiction (but actually non-existent)book, that is comprised of three separate works about an imaginary incident that supposedly took place as part of a real historical event. As if this is not sufficiently complex, The Dictionary of the Khazars(the real Pavić novel from 1984, not the imaginary 1691 referencework) has been released in two separate versions, a male editionand a female edition.

My copy is a female edition, and back before the days of theInternet, a reader who wanted to compare texts with the maleversion would have been forced to find a copy of it and trackdown the contrasting sentences-which, as it turns out, are limitedto a single paragraph. Nowadays a simple Google search willlead you to the alternative passages—although Milorad Pavić'sheirs are robbed out of the potential royalties of selling twocopies to every curious reader.

I won't be a spoiler here, but I will say that a comparison of thetwo passages raises more questions than answers. Then again,that is true of this entire novel, which may take on the superficial appearance of a reference work, but hardly lives up to the oneessential requirement of a dictionary, which is to provide clear,concise explanations. Instead Pavić prefers to play the role of obscurantist, spreading confusion, cultivating contradiction, andinstilling a sense of mystery into even the most ordinary events.

One of Pavić's specialty is (allow me to coin a term)the 'closed aphorism', short statements or phrases thatseem to offer a kernel of wisdom, but actually present a deadend. Any profound meaning must be supplied by the reader,and Pavić will make the task as hard as possible. Here aresome of his closed aphorisms:

"Dreams are the Friday to what in reality are called Saturday."

"He who takes a bite in his mouth will not be able to say his name;he who says his name will make the bite in his mouth bitter."

"Remembering is permanent circumcision."

"Time comes from the South and crosses the Danube atTrajan's Bridge."

"One cannot speak about half the soul. Otherwise we couldkeep one half in heaven and the other in hell."

"All roads to Palestine; none from it."

Yes, they are like Chinese fortune cookie wisdom from a bad PhilipK. Dick novel. And the muddled, mystical tone to these phrasesmatches the ambiance of the plot, which often takes on adreamlike quality. Dreams play a prominent role in Pavić'snovel: the Khazars often turn for advice to their dream-hunters,who have the ability to enter into these nocturnal visions, andeven follow in pursuit of a person or object from dream to dream.

Much of the "action" of this book takes place either inside ofdreams, or as a result of them. When the Khazar leader summonsthe representatives of the three religions to his court, he initiatestheir debate by asking them to interpret a dream. In the context of Dictionary of the Khazars, this is hardly an innocent request. Dreams can be both daunting and dangerous in this novel, and adreamer might be caught permanently in a dream from which no awakening is possible. Even the actions of the waking life mightbe controlled or influenced by someone else's dream.

The plot here resolves over the course of more than a thousandyears. Like a few other novels with such expansive chronologies—such as Cloud Atlas or Gods Without Men—Pavić plays withnotions of eternal recurrence and synchronicity. Much of themeaning here is subject to debate and discussion, but behindPavić's often cumbersome mysticism, real hard-nosed issues loom.What happens when different cultures try to appropriate the samehistorical narrative? How is personal and national identityshaped by allegiances to different brands of metaphysics?Above all, how do conflicts between belief systems manage todefy the law of entropy and maintain their heat (and, often,attendant violence) century after century?

Pavić does not have ready-made answers to these questions. And, despite the fact that the characters in this novel are alwaysready to offer grand pronouncements and visionary solutions, Idoubt that Pavić saw that as part of his mandate in writingDictionary of the Khazars. The end result is a dictionary wherealmost everything is left undefined. Oddly enough, much of thecharm of this peculiar book derives from that very paradox.